Square rebrands to Block as focus shifts to blockchain

“Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy," said Jack Dorsey.

Digital payments company Square announced that it has changed its company name to Block, seemingly in a shift towards blockchain technology.

In a Wednesday tweet, Square said the rebrand will bring the payments firm together with Cash App, the decentralized Bitcoin (BTC) exchange project tbDEX, and music and video streaming platform Tidal. An accompanying news release said that Square Crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused branch of the payment firm, will also be changing its name to Spiral and joining the Block family.

“Block references the neighborhood blocks where we find our sellers, a blockchain, block parties full of music, obstacles to overcome, a section of code, building blocks, and of course, tungsten cubes,” said Square. “We’ve been working to make this change for over a year, and it only represents a change of our official corporate name; not our purpose, our vision, our structure or how we operate.”

The rebranding comes a mere two days after Square — now Block — CEO Jack Dorsey resigned his position at Twitter, citing the need to give his replacement, chief technology officer and board member Parag Agrawal, the space to work without his influence at the social media giant. At the time, many speculated that Dorsey would get deeper into crypto and blockchain through Square’s operations, in much the same way Facebook turned its focus away from social media with a rebranding to Meta.

“Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same,” said Dorsey on the name change. “No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.”

Square said the legal name change would be effective “on or about” Dec. 10. According to the company, there will be no organizational changes to Block, Cash App, Tidal, Spiral or tbDEX.